sparks and embers
by graven.abiogenesis
Summary: Because sometimes the smallest meeting can kindle flames and douse embers, and pain can bring people (and trolls) together or break them apart. Originally written for Homestuck prompt meme on AO3.


**DISCLAIMER: **I am not Andrew Hussie. I do not own.

* * *

He knows she is convinced that he loves her, loves her hatred and torture and spite…but he doesn't, and he doesn't care about her at all anymore.

If he ever felt anything at all, it's long gone, and now he just wants her to _die._

* * *

The Psiioniic shuts his eyes as the Condesce approaches again, grinning vindictively at him.

He once again curses his helplessness as he stands immobile, suspended at his post while the flagship's innards ever-so-slowly spill over him, burning like acid, eating away at his flesh and turning him into more machine than troll.

He refuses to open his eyes as she lifts his chin to study his face, carefully running her thumb over his cheekbones. _Tender, loving…_

But it's just a lie, he knows. Soon enough, she will show her true colors, beat him black and blue with her "love", smirk wickedly at his stifled groans, as she tries to break his pride once again.

Her hand slides to rest on his shoulder, and then, she sighs.

It's a tiny sound, so quiet, but he hears it anyway.

And then, for the first time in ages, the Helmsman forgets about his duty and stares incredulously as his tormentor simply turns on her heel and walks away, slowly, carefully, like someone whose heart has finally quailed, finally recognized that something is _wrong_.

She knows he is broken, and she feels the need to fix him.

But...

Somehow, deep inside...

_She knows he is already broken and will never love her back._

* * *

She is more lenient, but he is still afraid.

And so, slowly, his certainty in the painful routine he had come to know falters, and his grip loosens. He can no longer control the flagship as he used to.

Then, one day, the Condesce simply orders him to land the flagship, and then disembarks, taking her crew along with her.

On the second day she is gone, he thinks he must have been left to die, but no. He finally wills the metal panels that had been covering the windows until then open, and then stares incredulously at another imprisoned figure not twelve meters from him, just beyond the door.

"Took you long enough," the other troll growls, eyes closed, flesh steaming and blood—_red blood, that's impossible, how?!_— streaming from the flesh in contact with his handcuffs. "What the hell are you doing here anyway, oh great Psiioniic?"

The Sufferer opens his eyes and glares at the Helmsman, all fire and unrelenting steel, and the psychic feels his own eyes widen, because, well, _damn._

Who knew that someone who hated the world so much could be so beautiful?

* * *

Slowly, they learn to coexist.

The troll who hates everything, everything, _everything_, suffers more than any being has a right to, doesn't feel pity for him. Instead, he knows just how it feels, but he never asks about the pain, never checks up on him. Instead, he mutters offhand comments designed to infuriate, to give him life again, keep him going just a little longer—words to stir blood with fury, fury to outlast the universe.

He likes that.

And the Helmsman suffers too, so gradually, the Sufferer learns to trust him a bit, because he of all people should know that it's hard not to be reduced simply to one's basest ideals and convictions when you live in a world whose walls are pain and blood.

The Signless realizes in shock, just struck like lightning out of the blue during a shared, silent peace, that suddenly, it's not just him against the world. It's him, and the world, and someone else, someone else who got caught up in everything against his will.

* * *

He knows why he was left there.

He was supposed to see someone who suffered more than he did, howled angry and insane at the skies. It was supposed to make him appreciate her generosity, oh, her _benevolence_, make him try harder once again. Make her flagship the fastest of all, fill his eyes with adoration or trust or _anything_ that would signal that he had any kind of feeling for her except weary resignation to his engineered fate.

When she sees none of this, she is furious, and he is in more pain than he can remember being in for ages, but that's okay.

_He knows someone even worse off who's immeasurably stronger, and he wants to see him again._

* * *

So rather than trying to appease her now, try to reduce the punishment, he does his worst. And time after time, she throws him back to him, _his_, in a futile attempt to ridicule and shame him.

But she doesn't, won't, _cannot_ comprehend that it does nothing but encourage him.

She wants him to love her so much she is blind to the fact that he is already in love with someone else.

But he is, and he thinks maybe the other loves him too, or at least has some feeling, because civil conversation is slow but it happens regularly now, and every time she abandons him there he's met with narrowed eyes, a wry chuckle, and a weary smirk.

* * *

But all good things come to an end.

It happens, of course, on a day when he's totally entranced.

The Sufferer is shaking his head dryly, thick, curly hair bouncing at a previous comment, when she storms back in.

And then she stops, because the Signless himself is _smiling_, smiling at her Helmsman, and it's clear that the one she wants as her matesprit is_happy_.

And while the look on his face fills her with a sort of lightness, because she really does love him, it fills her with dread too, because she knows she can never have him now.

She has to wonder what she did wrong, but she already knows. It makes her truly sad to realize that he has found happiness in another, because she tried her hardest, she really did. But…she couldn't stop hurting him.

She had tried hard to be someone else, someone he'd respect, someone regal and overbearing and powerful and so _in-your-face_ that he couldn't ignore her, because she knew if she acted the little girl she sometimes was when she was all alone he would do nothing but despise her and her weakness, her need to keep him close.

So instead, she trembles in fury and sweeps him away, and then runs herself, and…

She gives in. Her Imperial Condescension actually gives up.

She can't bear to see the despair on his face, so she orders him to return to the home planet, makes the first mistake she's made in more years than she can count.

And then, everyone is gone.

* * *

_Somewhere, sometime, strangely shaped iron cuffs fall, striking stone and sending up sparks, once, twice…then lie there, cold to the touch, for the first time in what seems an eternity._


End file.
